


Exposure

by penitent_misericorde



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Dark!Elsa, Gen, Mental Breakdown, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 09:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1977300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penitent_misericorde/pseuds/penitent_misericorde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All around her the walls thrust out new spikes and icicles. They’re accusing fingers, they’re bared and hungry knives, and <i>they are all pointing at her.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. accusation

**Author's Note:**

> This was written to exorcise the idea, so it's sort of just being tossed off as the idea strikes me. It will be a several-part series.

“Get it together,” Elsa murmurs.

Her voice echoes in the vaulted chamber and the echoes reverberate back on themselves; the words leave her lips anxious but reach her ears lower and mocking. Her heels click on the icy floors, crack-crack-crack; the sound of midwinter frost as it bursts old trees apart, of snow-clad mountain slopes birthing avalanches.

“Control it,” she demands.

She wraps her arms to her shoulders and huddles in on herself. Her breath rattles in her chest, and she tastes something dry and cold and crisp – snow – with every exhalation. The air leaves her lungs as cold as it came in.

“Don’t feel. Don’t feel. _Don’t feel!_ ”

All around her the walls thrust out new spikes and icicles. They’re accusing fingers, they’re bared and hungry knives, and they are all _pointing at her_.

Elsa’s skin has been almost milk-pale for almost as long as she can remember. She never tanned, never spent enough time outdoors for it. But now she’s wondering in the back of her mind, if that’s all there is to it. If the blood still flows in her veins, or whether the ice ate it long ago – spilling through her from her frigid heart outwards, claiming ownership of her flesh bit by bit, leaving nothing human behind.

Her mother’s hair was dark brown; her father’s hair was sandy. Hers is neither. Winter owns her body and soul, head to toe.

“The Sami boy will take care of Anna,” she mutters. “He’ll take her back to the city. He knew I’m dangerous. He won’t let her come back. It’s too dangerous up here.”

(Elsa’s spoken to herself for years. People do that all the time, and the long stretches of time secluded and her own natural shyness gave her more reason than most.

After a time, she started answering back, because the heaviest thoughts were ones she could confide in no one else. Not Mama, not Papa, certainly not the Bishop with his knowing watery eyes. She held long dialogues with herself, sometimes to sort her thoughts out, sometimes to blot out the still silence of her room; Mama and Papa would worry, but she told them it was just a game, because she didn’t want them pulling her out of her safe place where she could hurt others.)

But this time, something tugs the response from her lips in lower, huskier tones than her usual wont.

"It’s dangerous everywhere, Elsa. You’ve seen to that. She’s going to die.” _Die, die, die_ ; the words echo in the room and sound almost…approving.

And Elsa flinches, because she hadn’t meant to say that.

"What are you talking about?" she asks herself.

"’What power do you have to stop this winter?’" the husky voice mocks. “’To stop me?’ You’re everywhere, Elsa. You meant to do this. You knew it was happening and you didn’t do anything!”

Elsa freezes. What is she doing?

This is not madness, she tells herself. This isn't _real_. This is just you playing your game, working your thoughts out.

But doubt gnaws at her. She swallows and replies: "I- I didn’t know.”

The husky reply floats to the surface after only a second. "Of course you knew. You heard the fjord freeze. You felt the snow. Here you were up here, playing your _wicked_ little games, dressing like a harlot, flaunting your taint to the world. You _knew_. You just didn’t _look_.”

Elsa's skin is frosting; little clouds of blue-white mist hissing off her shoulders, her bared hands, her chest. She swallows, feeling the cold worm its way up her throat and twist around her heart. Thump. Thump. Thump.

"I don't believe you," she tells herself, and feels very, very strange.

"You’ve probably done this before, too.” A pause. "Strange time for a storm three years ago, wasn’t it? Clear sailing, they all said; only a few days, they said. And you were weak. You were afraid. You didn’t want them to go. You didn't think they'd come back.” She hears her monster howling outside the palace, and shivers. “Well, they went. And they never came back. Why is that?”

There's something going wrong in her chest.

“Elsa, stop it,” Elsa demands, but the words are shaky.

“’Elsa, stop it!” the husky tone repeats, sing-song. “Stop telling the truth! Let me lie to myself in my pretty little prison! Let me _fester_ while the kingdom starves! Let me _kill my sister_ and pretend she’ll be fine!”

_What have I done?_

Nausea surges through her, and she sways and topples. The ice is hard and smooth against her cheek, and she suddenly remembers, after terribly lovely days of blissful self-deception, just what cold feels like to other people - still, obdurate, callous, and empty.

And she has set that hungry, gnawing thing in Anna's chest.

Elsa's vision blurs, and the feeling of ice hissing out of her is like pain, but worse. She twists in on herself, and the tears come faster, and the air won't fill her lungs quickly enough and the ice beneath her cheek splinters and cracks as something colder than cold spills out from her in every direction.

It's a scream.

(Elsa has rarely screamed since childhood. Even her parents’ deaths could not draw a cry from her, because she would _not_ dishonor their memory with weakness. She would _not_ drag the servants in to see her blight when her parents had given so much up to keep her safe.)

The air goes rigid, freezes to glassy stillness in a great blue wave. For a moment Elsa seems to stand in a world of frosted glass, still and wavering and fuzzy at the edges. Things hold still for one endless heartbeat, and then crack apart like breaking windows. There is a great tinkling crash of icy shards, all spilling and shattering on the floor and exploding into a great white cloud that floods every inch of the room.

What escapes her lips does not sound like her. It has her voice, even if it’s been far too long since she laughed like this – raw, feral, and hard enough to shake her – but she wouldn’t – she can’t be cackling. Can’t be mocking herself, her despair. That’s- that’s madness.

She sucks in a breath and puts her hand to her lips to smother it. This is no longer a game, no longer her thoughts working themselves out. This needs to stop. But the snow pulls more words free.

“Queen Elsa of Arendelle,” Elsa-but-not-Elsa whispers. “Queen of empty slopes and empty homes and empty hearts.”

“Shut- shut up!” She claws her way to her feet and slashes at the air with curled fingers crooked like claws. The whiteout splits, and Elsa is staring at her reflection in the glossy walls – cracked and scoured by her terror.

The distorted reflection grins at her, and there is a spark – a flicker in its eyes, and no matter how much she tells herself it’s just dying sunlight passing through the ice the red glimmer seems very knowing. Inhuman.

Elsa stumbles backwards, and her feet suddenly lose their traction, the stupid, childish heels slide and skid and her wicked, sinful dress tangles her legs and she’s falling.

(A five-year old Anna is hopping from pillar to pillar, giggling, and Elsa slips. She _never_ slips; her feet always find the grooves and roughened bits when she wants to and slide along frictionless when she wants to, but this time she slips.

And Anna falls with a little startled moan, and Elsa’s ice is worming into her like poison to snuff her out.)

The ice betrays her, but she can't help but feel she's been pushed. Her hands sputter white and blue, slamming her into the floor; the crack rings out through the room. Elsa shrieks.

But it collapses into wild, reckless laughter that fills her ears, shakes her chest. She chokes on frost, so welcoming before – now the winter is twisted in on itself and she coughs and retches snow out in great hacking gasps that rattle her from head to toe. She can taste the bitter loathing in it, metallic and sharp. The snow erupts outwards in great tumults and flying fragments of jagged ice flake off her like a snake sheds its skin.

It feels as though she’s coming apart – concealment and etiquette and queenly smiles and dreams of sisterhood and all her self-righteous lies about _protecting_ her sister and her family.

Elsa doesn’t dare to look to see if her skin is coming off with it.

The magic isn’t a curse. It’s her. Petty, greedy, lustful – so vile it can’t touch another without killing them, hiding its malice in shallow beauty. Too selfish to sacrifice for others, as they’ve offered up their lives to keep her safe.

Bits of flying ice the size of her palms reflect her fractured, grinning reflection, teeth bared and eyes wide, but they aren’t a stranger’s eyes, they’re her eyes, filled the hate she’s seen in the mirror on sleepless nights.

Her blizzard twists in on her, buries her, shatters the delicate filigree of ice sculpture and frozen reliefs she carved into the walls. The room whites out. Elsa curls into a shaking ball and presses her snow-billowing hands to her ears to shut out the noise. Her scream is lost in the storm.

Her world breaks into pieces and falls into blackness, but she can feel the magic still gushing out of her like blood from a wound.


	2. a sacrifice

(“Elsa! Elsa, help! It hurts, it hurts, it-“

The ice closes over Anna’s face, and her scream cuts off abruptly. She is locked in place; a perfect icy figurine covered with cracks and splinters and still, still, still, as Anna never is and never should be. Her face is still frozen in a scream for help.

Elsa's hand droops nerveless to her side. Her fingers are still hissing frost. She stumbles back from the frozen shape as the throne room doors slam open and the household staff surround her. She offers no resistance until she realizes they’re trying to take her from Anna.

“No! I can fix this! I can fix this! Let me- let me go!” She struggles, but she is hardly more than a girl, a woman who’s never worked a day with her hands in her life, and the hands that close on her arms and shoulders are rough and powerful. The earthy stink of sweat floods her nostrils.

Elsa doesn’t mean to hurt them, but the ice comes with her terror. Her attackers shriek in pain and fear, falling back over themselves with her winter blistering and bleaching their naked skin. She throws herself forward, desperate to reach Anna, desperate to touch her, to apologize, to make amends, but they seize her by the heel and pull her back clawing at the icy floor of her room, leaving a long trail of frost like a bloody trail to mark her guilt.

Her captors are not gentle. They are not respectful. She’s no longer their Queen; she’s a _sorceress_ , a monster, less than human. She’s damned them all. There is nothing but hate in their eyes as they drag her from her lair like the beast she is.

She’s feared this moment all her life, but there’s something inevitable about it too. _You knew it would end like this_ , Elsa-but-not-Elsa murmurs beneath her breath, and the laughter that seizes her is wild and fey and does nothing but enrage her fur-clad captors more – shivering, ghastly pale with frostbite, dying as _her_ winter eats away at them.

Arendelle is a tomb beneath a white funeral shroud.

They break her fingers, shred her gaudy dress, batter and beat her until she’s half-senseless, but the pain almost doesn’t register beneath the guilt. Her servants tie her hands behind her and parade her out into the town square with jeers and catcalls and faces full of hate – Gerda scowling, Kai shuddering and too pale and clearly half-dead from the cold.

She’s done all this to them, but she almost can’t bring herself to care because _Anna_. “Let me go!” she begs. “I need – Anna! Anna! Just let me help her, let me help-“

A pile of oil-soaked wood awaits. Elsa is still screaming and begging as they bind her to the stake. She looks down and it’s her parents who thrust the torch between the soaked timbers – her father’s face calm and quiet and vaguely disappointed, the look worse than all the shouting he never, ever did because it was pained rather than angry.

Some part of her is demanding she at least try to die like a Queen, head held high and face set and no tears or screams. But Elsa is no queen. She's just a sick, tainted little girl, and the tears freeze and burn her cheeks and Elsa-but-not-Elsa is laughing at her.

But this is right. This is how it must be. Elsa grits her teeth and clenches herself and tries to suck in the winter all at once, to draw it all out of the air and the land and her people's consumption-ridden lungs so that when she burns there will be nothing left, no stain to blight the world with evidence of her passing. She thinks of Anna and hopes this will be enough to buy her life.

Her resolve lasts until she sees her father smile. The flames rise and his expression is that of a man set free at last.

Elsa's heart snaps into a hundred pieces, and something else – something she has no name for – boils forth.

It’s partly the pain, which is terrible. But Elsa knows pain, can _accept_ pain. It’s partly fear, acrid and thick and choking as the smoke filling her lungs. But most of it is _hate_ , sharp and tight and electric. Another old friend, but always before she’s hated the _stupid_ little girl too careless and soft to say no to her reckless sister, the shy, gawky, teenager all coltish limbs and downcast eyes, the outwardly-pure young woman reading her filthy romances and dreaming of the feeling of sweat-slicked, soft skin against her own.

Now? Now she hates _them_. She hates them _so much_. It’s poison, but it makes her feel…strong.

 _Snow Queen_ , Elsa-but-not-Elsa murmurs, and Elsa finds herself laughing.

Her dress bubbles and boils and runs in trickling lines, then the skin beneath begins to follow suit. But there’s no blood, no charred muscle; somehow she’s always known it wouldn’t be muscle. It’s what she’s secretly known was inside all along: snow. Snow and ice, clumped about her bones. She’s feared that all her life, but now? Now it is _liberating_ to watch the glacier water trickle and run from the splits in her snowy flesh.

She is so much greater than these hot little lives. _No_ , begs a Queen in a tattered dress in the back of her mind. _Don_ _’t hurt them!_ But her voice is very, very small, a muffled cry in a howling blizzard.

Elsa lets go.

The storm erupts from her all at once. There's a joy to it, a cruel ecstasy., It pours from the gaps in her skin and her eyes and her core and engulfs the crowd. The nearest never have a chance – flashed to ice statues before they can turn to flee. Those behind begin to run but Elsa pursues them, one with the frost, freed from the weak husk melting to a puddle on the stake, tearing the hot, wet screams from their lips and blotting out their stain on her wintry purity.

No fears now. Such _power_. Each heart stopped makes hers beat faster - no filthy organ of meat and bone, but the swirling, pulsing center of her storm, and it feels so right-

 _No,_ she screams as the tattered Queen, and Elsa suddenly remembers who and what she is, _no, no no no no-_ )

"-no!"


	3. ascending the throne

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, I'm sorry this took so long, for all those who're still bearing with me after this. Last couple weeks were rough with work and writer's block.
> 
> This story has gotten a lot longer in the telling, but I suppose that's good. I've seen writers who are much better than myself in this fandom, so all I can do is hope I'm doing the story justice with my limited skills.
> 
> Honestly, I don't like torturing poor Elsa!

* * *

 

"-no!"

Elsa's cry tears her awake, but for a heart-stopping moment she can’t open frost-encrusted eyelids. She breaches the surface of sleep and leaves the old, familiar nightmare - well-worn by many years, always with the same ending – behind.

A blizzard rages in her upper chambers, snowflakes turned silver in the ghostly aurora light coming in through the walls. She can feel the wind’s moan in her chest, a long, hungry yowl that sounds vaguely like her voice magnified tenfold and loosed to harmonize with the high shrieks of mountain gales. Her palace shudders and thrums with the forces it’s struggling to contain.

 _Metaphor_ , Elsa thinks, and can’t help but laugh. It is not a healthy sound.

The magic erupts from her, screams wrought in snow and storm. Reality and fantasy blur together. When she closes her eyes to blink the scene of her pyre is painted against her eyelids, and the heat seems to scorch her skin. Her dead father’s relieved eyes haunt her.

She hangs in the center of the room, ensnared by twisted strands of ice spun from the fabric of her dress’ train and sleeves. Her limbs ache. She has been suspended for quite some time.

A few minutes’ struggling and she can feel the bonds fray and crack, but before Elsa dares to hope the wind screams across her and the cracks freeze over again, drinking in the wild magic streaming off her skin. All Elsa receives for her effort is a face full of powdered bits. A thin coating of ice has formed upon her skin; it cracks and falls in musical flakes.

“Conceal,” Elsa whispers. “Conceal. Conceal. Conceal.” She chants it like a psalm, but the words begin to tangle themselves as they leave her lips. “Don’t let it out. You’re letting it out you’re letting it out I can’t -”

She clamps her lips shut and swallows her panic, but there’s just too much. Papa was wrong. There are too many holes in her to conceal what’s inside; the good girl’s torn herself open once and there’s not enough left to seal the gaps. She is rags and tatters and bits of skin wrapped about a blizzard, and she can let it flow or let it tear her apart.

She isn’t strong enough to hold herself so tightly in.

She doesn’t want to. Not again. It hurt. It hurt so much – living in whispers and furtive glances, taking desperate shallow breaths, clenching herself tight behind locks and bars to hold winter and want within. Seeing the judging stares in every gaze, waiting for her to slip, waiting to pounce…

“How’s the cold now, Elsa?” the husky voice asks – but this time Elsa doesn’t feel her lips moving.

Elsa’s eyes dart to and fro, seeking some reference point in the storm. Her heart pounds out a desperate toccata in her chest and her chest is heaving for breath that never seems quite enough.

“I’m going crazy,” she mutters to herself.

“Yes, you are,” not-Elsa agrees in her husky voice. Again Elsa doesn’t feel her lips moving. “Little bit. Of course, you’ve been the very picture of sanity up until now. The family madwoman, locked in her room swathed so tight in clothes she can’t hurt anyone else...”

“ _Enough!_ ” Elsa shouts. “You’re _not real!_ ” A rough, ragged layer of ice buckles outwards across the floor, humped and heaped in whorls like piles of shed serpent skin. “Be quiet! I need to concentrate!”

(Somewhere far off, she feels Anna’s heart slowing, stiffening, cooling. Elsa shudders away from that sensation. Some part of her is close to her sister at last, and it’s killing her.)

“Careful,” the voice comments from right behind her ear. “You could _hurt_ somebody, Elsa. Again, that is.” A cold hand on her cheek – too cold. There’s no pulse in the skin, and the flesh feels grainy in the way only snow can.

Elsa starts and stares into burning blue eyes only a few inches from her own.

She isn’t quite sure what she expected. Perhaps something like her monster outside – ungainly, bulbous, misshapen, an ugly threat wrought in snow on a monstrous scale.

The speaker is too pale to be a breathing woman, but it’s certainly shaped like one – lithe and sleek, clad in icy skirts and a blue-white dress with a tight bodice and a royal cape with a high collar. Her skin is bloodless, her cheeks prominent and chin sharp like the point of a dagger, a knowing grin on her pixie lips.

There is a crown atop her head, a sharp circlet with bladelike prongs rising from the dark mane of her hair, wild and free and untrammeled by braid or bun. Her shoulders are set and her pert nose held proudly high, like the Queen Elsa never has been.

No one of the details resembles Elsa in any particular respect. The eyes gleam with mischief and thinly veiled dark amusement - the gaze of a woman who knows and enjoys power. The hair is a passing imitation of her mother's shade, if spun from fine strands of dark blue ice. But somehow Elsa feels the way the other's appearance reflects her own.

“Surprised, Elsa?” asks her snow-shadow. “What are you doing on my mountain?”

Elsa stares. She blinks several times, willing the hallucination to vanish, but the other remains stubbornly solid. “You,” she tells the other at last, “are a figment of my imagination.”

“Really?” The other chuckles, raising a hand to her lips in an unsettlingly familiar gesture; the sound makes Elsa’s skin crawl. “Let’s see.”

She stands up again, heels clack-clack-clacking on the ice, and her hand is a blur of sharp blue fingers, and something explodes in Elsa’s head.

When the world’s stopped swaying and Elsa can see properly again, she sees a grin on those pixie lips.

“Good imagination,” the shadow-Elsa says.

Her hand brushes up against Elsa’s throbbing cheek, at once patronizing and fond. “What are we going to do with you?” she muses, and her voice makes Elsa tingle the way glass does in a strong wind,

“What are you?” Elsa breathes.

The other’s movements are mesmerizing – the way her limbs slice through the air, the way her hips sway as she stalks forward – yes, stalks, Elsa thinks with a mix of trepidation and, more disturbing still, bitter envy – daring the world to defy her. She moves like royalty. There’s thoughtless, easygoing command in her every step, shoulders set and smile impish and teeth gleaming like beautiful icicles.

Elsa’s shadow laughs. It’s a throaty, purring sound, but not kind. “Don’t you know?”

She reaches out and takes hold of the whirling wind, her fingers sparkling, and Elsa feels the magic surge through her in a jolt, gushing free through all the gaps in her will. Stolen power gathers at the other’s hands as she lifts them high. The ice of Elsa’s castle lets out a long, tortured groan that coaxes out sympathetic pangs in Elsa’s chest.

Jagged icicles thrust out from the buckling floor and stab into one another, not a right angle in sight. This is no smooth construction, fairy-tale flourishes over earthly architecture. It is a seat formed by hateful swords without a hilt, all sharp edges and questing tips steaming with hoarfrost, riven with gaps that whistle as the snowy wind streams through them and sprays them high from flues in the top like the mouths of pipe organs.

No human seat looks like this. Yet it is, undeniably, a throne.

The shadow-Elsa smiles and lowers herself into her thirsty throne, brushing her cape across the tumbled heap. One dark eyebrow rises, as if to say, _see? I can do this too_. She crosses her legs and peers up at Elsa held in place by the cords.

“Who are you?” Elsa demands, and knows the answer before it’s spoken.

“Arendelle’s reigning Queen.”


	4. self-mortification

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is - the scene that inspired this fic in the first place. I hope it was slightly worth the wait. 
> 
> You may ask - where's Marshmallow during all this? The answer? I have no idea. Most likely, I'd say he's not able to get inside. Alternatively, he doesn't even realize his mistress is in danger, since he was made to keep _others_ away from her.

It's midnight, and the sky is bleeding in shifting red curtains, angry and pulsing.

The palace screams in fierce mountain winds. Ice cracks and groans, and the ever-present blizzard now shifts and heaves like the thumping of a heart. (Anna's heart, slowing, stiffening, freezing.)

Elsa's doppelganger is perched on the seat of her faerie throne, her legs crossed and her hands pressed tight together. Her smile is the worst thing - beatific and yet malicious, kind and compassionate as a shark. The blue eyes sparkle as she stares at her creator. Something about that faceted stare makes Elsa’s skin crawl.

"What is this?" she asks. "A trial?"

"A confessional.”

The ice palace shifts and groans in protest. Wind shrieks in through widening cracks. Elsa feels the tower’s throes through the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands where they are wrapped about by the ice, but something else too - her chest aches. She isn't sure why. This is the first lovely thing she's ever made, but it's just a thing, a piece of frozen water, a bit of childish whimsy.

But it hurts.

(How dare she be so pained by something of her making?)

"You aren't a Queen," she argues. "You've no claim. Anna's-"

"...going to freeze before the week is out, Elsa." The dark eyebrows rise.”Not that she’s cut out for the throne anyways. So who’s going to be the responsible one? And it's your fault. You spend your whole life happy to take advantage of others' kindness, and the day you begin to earn it, you throw it all away. I hope you're happy."

The words twist in Elsa's ears. "Happy?" she snaps. “What kind of a monster-“ Ice is snaking across her legs and back. “I left! I left so they would leave me alone. I need- I need to be away! They need to stay away! It’s safer-“

“There’s only one way they’ll be safe from you, Elsa.” The other laughs. "The only question’s whether you’re brave enough to do it.”

"Do what?"

"This is you.” The other beckons to the swirling storm about them. “All this is Elsa. Hungry. Lonely. Angry. Desperate to touch, to feel. You’re the problem.” The other's eyes blaze. "End the storm.”

Elsa's heart jerks in her chest.

“I didn’t _do_ anything!” she says. It comes out plaintive.

“You didn’t mean to do anything. All your life, you’ve told yourself this was for them. Well. Now it’s time to show if you meant it.”

“I’m not trying to hurt anyone! I ran away so I wouldn’t hurt anyone!”

“So very noble? That’s not you, Elsa.” The shadow-Elsa shakes her head. “You didn’t think. She defied you, and how _dare_ little Anna do that? But you couldn’t keep that ugliness inside, could you? And when everyone knew just what their Queen really was, you ran. That’s not courage. That’s cowardice.”

"I _locked myself away_ to keep Anna safe!” Elsa screams.

“Anna, Anna, Anna!” the other mocks, voice sing-song. “That’s always your excuse. You don’t love Anna, Elsa. You don’t even _know_ Anna! This is all about you. It’s _always_ been about you.” She sweeps her hand across to encompass the bonds suspending Elsa by her arms and legs. “You’ve cast yourself as the martyr in your own little private drama. Anna’s just another prop.”

“You’re lying.” Tension draws Elsa’s jaw muscles tight until her teeth grind together. “You don’t _know_ anything. You’re just something I dreamed up to hurt myself.”

“You were so angry when she suggested bringing you back to Arendelle,” her doppelganger hisses. “How dare soft, pampered little Anna tell you to go back into your cage? Back to shame and scorn and responsibility? No, you couldn’t let that happen.”

Elsa opens her mouth to deny it, but the words get turned around in her throat.

“That’s all right.” Her doppelganger leans back in her seat, hands settling on the armrest of her faerie throne. There’s another tugging sensation in Elsa’s chest, and the palace pulses with a long, deep vibration – bits of the storm thicken and pile about her feet, heaping and hardening into cloudy blue ice. “You don’t have to go back, Elsa.”

Elsa’s mouth loses what little moisture it has. Her trapped extremities go rigid, nothing but bone-deep cold and stillness. “No,” she begs, and hates how small she sounds, a frightened child again with a woman’s face. “No. Please.”

Her shadow watches Elsa squirm with interest bright in her too-pale blue eyes. “Elsa, it’s easier this way,” she says. “I promise it won’t hurt.”

“I don’t want-” She struggles, but the feeling of motion ends abruptly at her knees; she can no longer tell where ice and flesh divide from one another. “Let me go! I have to- I have to stop this! I have to save them!”

“Suppose you do,” her shadow says, and there’s a strange note in the husky voice now – pity? “Suppose you pull all this back in again. Suppose you stop the winter, thaw Anna – then what? Put on the gloves again? Take shallow breaths? Lock yourself away and try to ignore all the judging stares? Deny what you’ve wanted all this time?”

The ice is halfway up Elsa’s thighs now, and snaking along her forearms. She only hurts at the edges when she tries to break free; it’s as if she simply…ends where the ice has closed in tight, nibbling away at her -her.

“Think about it,” her shadow murmurs. “You’ll never be able to hide again. They know what you are now, what you can do. Some of them will hate you. Fear you. They’ll hide when you pass by. Others will try to remove you.” Her voice turns soft. “You’ll never sleep easy again. Never see Anna again – you’ll have to send her away, assuming she doesn’t run from you all on her own.”

“She said she wouldn’t leave me.” Elsa’s voice is plaintive. “I had to force her away.”

“Now. What about tomorrow? When she’s had time to think it through? She’ll leave, Elsa. Like Mama and Papa left. Live or die, you’ll be alone. And alone you’ll stay. Wanting, begging, craving love – but no one loves a blizzard.”

Elsa’s thought of these things before. Said many of them, in the dark hours alone in her room. But spoken by someone else they crash down on her shoulders like avalanches and bury her beneath a heavy weight.

Her eyelids droop shut as the cold settles upon her in heavy layers.

For almost as long as she can remember, she’s tried to be good. Locked herself in her room on days when the ice just wouldn’t stop coming out. Wasted days memorizing facts no one would ever expect her to remember, pouring over old musty tomes that flaked at the edges when she touched them. Agonized over every single problem and lecture her tutors ever gave her until ever single answer was perfect, every error expunged.

Mistakes hurt, every time.

She'd always known she wouldn't be a good sister. But she’d hoped to be a good queen. Queen Elsa of Arendelle was someone else – someone proud and strong, someone who walked with pride through the streets of her capital and drew all eyes when she passed. Queen Elsa would never stare at herself in the mirror and hate the pallid face staring back; she feared nothing and was feared by no one.

History and law and court etiquette – they were another set of gloves. She’d just been trying to lock herself away. Close every door her curse could spill out from. She’d built her own prison brick by brick, thinking it would make her strong, but all it had done was strangle her.

She's so tired.

 _It isn_ _’t fair_ , she thinks.

"Just let go, Elsa," her doppelganger urges. "It will be like falling asleep."

_It isn_ _’t fair._

Glassy thoughts skitter across the back of her mind.

She’s lived so little. Twenty one years on this earth and her world is bounded by one small castle’s walls. She has never traveled, hardly ever met people; even the kingdom that is hers by acclamation, birthright and duty is a mystery to her. She’s never known another’s hands or lips, never been gazed at the way she’d seen Mama and Papa stare at one another, drinking in each other’s features as though they were afraid the other would fade away if they blinked.

She’s hollow, but she doesn’t want to be.

There is so much beauty in this world, and Elsa has never touched enough of it. She remembers striding across the mountain slopes where so few have walked – alone beneath the stars, somehow small and somehow very large. Remembers throwing off her cape and reveling in the wind tickling her cheeks and neck, remembers joy teaching her to dance as children did – the steps she’d so long forgotten, the rhythms buried beneath years and years of steady, slow terror.

Remembers being free.

And remembers, too, that there was a time when her curse didn’t seem a curse at all. Remembers the ecstasy in letting power flow through her, of turning thought to substance and etching her will on the world in snow and ice and dancing blue light. Remembers creation – no filter between her thoughts, no need for workmen or tools or other intermediaries.

 _I do not want to die._ The thought tingles. _I do not deserve to die. I am not a monster._

Elsa’s eyes open again.

 _I deserve to live_.

Ice coats her in thick, faceted layers, but her heart is beating hard, and every pulse is deliciously, thrillingly cold. The snow and sky throb through the surface of her palace and into her, _through_ her. She reaches out through breath and pulse and will, taking possession of her element, testing its measure.

It flutters feather-light beneath her will, and for a moment her resolve does too. _I deserve to live_ , she reminds herself, whispering it beneath her breath to focus her thoughts. _I have made my errors, and I will fix them - or I will learn from them and make amends. By myself or with others, I deserve to live_. _I have done nothing wrong_.

It happens fast. Determination becomes rage. Power rides a tide of biting adrenalin, jolting through from heart to hand and leaves a glassy, silvery ecstasy in its wake. Ice cracks and spalls away in fragments from Elsa’s arm as she tears it free of its icy prison. Then her chest, then her legs, the pieces softening as they fall and sparkling, spun once more into the glistening fabric of her dress.

“ _What?_ _”_ snarls Elsa’s doppelganger.

Elsa’s hand curls into a fist. Her teeth grind against one another.

There’s a high-pitched whistle, a crackling noise, and a surging ripple of blue light reverberating through the maimed walls of her palace. Wherever it touches the cracks snap shut, the ice clears, the spikes shatter into flying powder.

“What are you _doing_?” the other cries. “This isn’t-“

Elsa doesn’t wait to hear whatever it isn’t. She slashes out with her upraised hand, and the flying powder blurs, spinning like thread on the loom. Great white torrents buffet her nemesis, raking across the snow-woman – who thrusts her hands forward to ward off the blow and spins a counter-offensive, twisting off the flying snow into spikes and penitentes.

Tension. Jagged strands and spindly flowers of frost burst amidst the figure-eight of blizzard where their wills meet, forming abstract icy bits and whorls and strands that fall to the floor and shatter. Sparking light crackles in the epicenter.

 _I deserve to live_ , Elsa repeats to herself. She’s shouting now, and she doesn’t care. “I deserve to live!” Her voice echoes through the room. " _I am not a monster!_ "

Her shadow’s will falters, and there’s a horrid sound as Elsa’s power tears through her. (She hopes it’s just the air. Can creatures of snow feel pain?) Her doppelganger staggers back three paces, sways and stares at the jagged mass of frost that’s burst from her chest. Knife-edged spikes stab out randomly from the snowy flesh. She coughs hoarfrost and tries to rise. “You _wanted_ me,” she hisses. “All these years you’ve wanted to be me.”

“Not anymore.” _I have done nothing wrong_.

“This won’t solve anything. You need me. You know I’m right. They’ll never accept you.”

Elsa’s fingers flex, curl and crook like claws, spinning a phantom thread, and reaches through the ice into her creation’s heart.

“It’s a start.”

There’s another moment of tension as her creation resists. She can feel the magic holding the other together, feel the poisoned bitterness that feeds her and gives her strength – but for all of that, the snow-woman is a marvelous thing. No cathedral is more finely constructed; no snowflake is more delicate. This is _life_ , real and vibrant. Her palace is a crude and ungainly thing by comparison. Elsa has no idea how she could do this.

She should feel guilty. She should feel reluctant. She doesn’t. (This will bother her later, but not now.)

Her shadow’s eyes narrow. She bares icicle-teeth, gathers herself, and lunges, wreathed in snow and bits of jagged ice, flinging caution to the wind as her shoes clack-clack-clack on the ice. Her voice rises in an inarticulate yell.

Shattering her is easier than breathing.

Her doppelganger comes apart in an echoing crash and tinkle of ice fragments, a great _whump_ and explosion of snow that spills across the floor and splashes across Elsa’s face and front. The cry cuts out abruptly. Blue eyes burn into Elsa as the rest of their owner disintegrates, and Elsa staggers – feeling something heavier than mountains slam into her with force enough to drive her to her knees, a sudden nausea and pounding headache as whatever went into her creation finds its home once more.

She sways, nearly falls, and catches herself on her hands. There is powder sticking to her, dripping from her hands and face and hair, sticky and numbing.

Her head is filled with stars and haze.

Blue leaks from her fingertips into the palace’s walls, and the ice palace mends itself with a high, relieved crackling. The air clears.

Elsa's laugh rings through the palace walls.


	5. a Queen at bay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a long moment where all three stare at one another. They’re trying to circle around her, like wolves hounding a wounded hart. They have only one shot, she thinks.  
> Well, she doesn’t. Power throbs through her. She is wind and sky and winter, and winter does not tire.  
> They want to fight the Snow Queen. Let them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet you thought this one was over, didn't you?
> 
> I considered leaving it at the last chapter, but honestly I suppose I may as well keep going at this point. Trying to get inside Elsa's head in light of her struggling with her sanity and guilt is always interesting, and this scene is interesting because it's the closest she ever gets to malice - albeit for entirely understandable reasons.

The southern sky is smeared with gray clouds. Early sunrise slices over the mountain slopes and splashes gold through the palace walls.

Elsa's mind feels too tight for all the feverish thought straining it's bonds. She still hasn’t slept properly; her eyes burn and throb behind their lids. She knows she should be hungry, but it’s little more than a vague grumbling in her stomach. Nothing feels entirely real and a not-inconsiderable part of her wonders if the night's ordeals were just a dream.

Or elaborate shadow-puppetry, a girl playing with her dolls.

She'll worry about that later. _I have to find Anna_ , she thinks. _I have to see she's all right. I won't let her take me back. I just need to see if she's safe._

 _Liar_. It’s barely more than a whisper, slipping out to hang heavy in the air, and ends in a little wicked chuckle.

Elsa pretends not to hear.

She descends the stairs, brushing her skirts behind her. Not the most practical attire for travel. (How _did_ she ascend the mountain in evening dress and high heels? Her flight from Arendelle is a blur of vague haze and flashes of mountainside. She seemed to be traveling _far_ too quickly...) Maybe a change of wardrobe is needed – what do the mountaineers wear? Ragged leathers and heavy furs? Thick stomping boots?

Or perhaps her creation outside will carry her – but the thought of approaching the monster tightens the back of her throat and sets her hands to shaking and streaming frost.

Even an _accidental_ creation tried to murder her. What might the monster outside – something spun in anxiety and panic -do?

She hesitates at the doors to her palace. The creature has no name. It left her to her attacker during the night. What has she given it but a towering resentment? Why should it regard her fondly?

This seems like a very bad idea – but she will have to dare it either way, unless she intends to stay in her palace until she starves. (Why isn’t she hungrier? What is _happening_ to her?) And Elsa has had enough of self-imposed jailers.

Elsa slips across the chamber and tugs open the doors. They swing in easily, soundlessly, and the mountain wind rushing across her moat of empty air whistles in to curl about her in welcome. It brushes feather-light against her cheeks, slides delicate billowing touches across the sensitive skin of her neck and shoulders.

 _Stay, Elsa._ It’s so easy to imagine the words on the wind. _Stay with us_. _We love you._

Oh, but it’s tempting. If not for the dependable refrain of _Anna, need to see Anna, need to fix Anna_ , she might consider it.

“I’ll be back,” she promises the mountain wind, and cups her hands together. Power tingles through her chest. A little floret of flying snow blossoms in her hands and she offers it up with a toss. Flakes scatter on the wind like flying petals and fall into the cleft.

She peers into the wind, shading her eyes with one hand to block out the glare of the rising sun just knifing its way above the jagged mountain peaks. There's no immediate sign of her creation, but in the too-bright glimmer of her sleep-deprived state, she supposes one lump of snow looks much like another.

There are people on horses coming up the slope across the rift, almost invisible for far too long amidst the dawn shadows. Elsa nearly jumps out of her skin at the sight.

Most wear gray cloaks. Wool, not the leathers or hide sewn together with twine and topped with furs the mountain folk seem to favor. There are spears in their hands, and hunting crossbows.

The cloaks are palace livery; the tall hats are those of soldiers. They do not look friendly. They’re huddled together on their horses, nervous; she can practically smell it from here. The auburn-haired fellow at their head is familiar and it takes only a moment to identify him– Prince Hans, Anna’s dapper companion at the ball, the one who’d driven her to this precipice to begin with.

What is he doing here?

“-to find Princess Anna!” she hears dimly. Whatever else he’s saying blurs into gibberish in her ears.

 _And Anna isn_ _’t here_ , the venomous whisper murmurs. _You sent her off to die_. _What do you suppose they_ _’ll do when they don_ _’t find her, Snow Queen?_

Elsa's heart stops. Her nightmare is real. They’re here, and they’ll drag her to her pyre.

They haven’t seen her yet. She darts backwards, presses herself up against the translucent doors, and slips like a wraith between them. Wants to run, but her feet seem frozen in place. The air’s too still, heavy and hard; her hands are shaking and sweat is gushing down her shoulders and back and slicing little cracks in her shimmering dress.

Hide. She has to hide. But there’s no place to hide in her ice palace. It’s all open rooms and translucent walls. _Stupid!_ What was she thinking? Did she think she could just run away and they’d never come? Why hadn’t she built this place to be defended?

She can’t drag herself from the door. Elsa stares out over the bridge and watches them approach.

“Help me.” She isn’t sure who she’s asking – the wind, the venomous voice still lurking in the back of her mind and stealing control of her lips, her monster, her parents’ ghosts. Or God. It just slips out.

Maybe something heard, because the hillock of snow beside her bridge stirs, and her monster uncoils like a hound awoken from a nap. Its growl is the low, rumbling sound of an oncoming avalanche blended with something metallic and guttural.

Some distant part of Elsa admits that Hans has courage. Or – like her sister – he’s completely insane, because instead of running, he draws his sword and stands his ground.

Elsa’s mouth goes dry when the beast lunges at Anna’s paramour with one vast clawed hand. But the Prince is quick – he rolls beneath the blow, and spears are hurled; crossbow bolts hiss. They crunch into snowy flesh and bristle from her monster’s forearm almost comically.

But of course that is the worst possible thing to do. The answering bellow makes her shudder. She cringes when the creature’s forearm slams into two of the men – red-clad, not the gray-blue wools of Arendelle. Foreigners. But people.

She should be stepping in. If anyone could make this monster obey, it’s her, not the men outside – brave, but only human, with weapons meant to cut flesh and shed flowing blood. People could _die_. She wants to move, wants to speak, but her tongue is stuck to the root of her mouth and her breath is too short and her legs just won’t listen to her.

 _Move, Elsa_ , the husky voice in her thoughts whispers. _Be the Queen. Their blood is on your hands_.

Move, move, move, all the voices in her head are agreeing now, everything in Elsa screams _MOVE_ and she still can’t bring herself to walk out onto the bridge. Because they’re here for her – Anna’s not here to save her – here to drag her screaming to the flames, here to watch her burn.

“Don’t kill them,” she whispers. She has no idea if the creature can hear her. “Make them run.”

She slams the doors and runs for her life, taking the steps up to the landing two at a time, and the husky voice and the tattered Queen both are screaming at her. Behind her the she hears the doors slam open – _oh god, they_ _’re coming, they_ _’re coming_. Her heart leaps into her mouth and she scrambles up the long staircase, beyond coherent plans, thinking vaguely of escape. She’s always had a room to hide in.

“Up there!” someone shouts. “Come on!”

 _There_ _’s no way out, Snow Queen_ ; the words come out in panting gasps as she fights with her train and climbs for her life. Her _stupid_ heels slow her down; she can hear them coming, their boots heavy on her work, echoing everywhere in the wide open hall.

She reaches the upper hall and turns about, seeking somewhere to hide, some way out – but there’s nothing but open sky out beyond the balconies, and the translucent walls leave no shadows to cower in.

 _Oh, this looks familiar,_ the husky voice remarks beneath her breath. _Trapped again_.

“SHUT! UP!”

 _Kill or be killed, Elsa_.

“We’ve got her!” one of them growls from behind, and she whirls. They’ve crested the stairs, two big, heavy-built men in Weselton’s damnable red coats and white gloves. She tries to meet their eyes, but they’re like stones. There’s no pity there.

“No,” she gasps anyways, throwing up her empty hands as if they were strong enough to stop _anything_. “Please.” Get them talking, if they talk they’ll see she didn’t mean it, any of it, that she’s human just like them, and maybe they won’t drag her to the fire if she can just get them to let her go-

One of them raises his crossbow. The mechanism cracks, the fletching hisses as it cuts through the air, and the wicked tip of its bolt grows to fill Elsa’s entire world.

She doesn’t scream only because she doesn’t have time to. Her arms go up, her eyes scrunch shut. She expects the blood and the pain any moment now. She has no idea what being shot should feel like.

A faint cracking sound. The pull in her chest again. She opens an eye, and the bolt is frozen solid in a pane of ice inches from her face. It looks sharp enough to slice her in half. She can see it now, played out in gruesome detail, bolt slashing through her eyes.

 _Oh, God_. _I don_ _’t want to die._

They’re already reloading. Aren’t those supposed to take a while to load?

“Stay. Away!” She throws her hands out again. At last it’s listening; the winter courses through her, blasting from her cupped palms. Spikes rip out of the floor and cut a jagged line past the shooter. He rolls – he’s quick, how can they be so quick _and_ so large?

“Fire, fire!” one of them is screaming. Elsa doesn’t give him the chance. Another whistling gust of ice nearly clips his head, and doubt is banished, obliterated at the suddenly worried expression on his face. _Yes,_ she thinks, and is dimly startled by the cold certainty in her own thoughts. _You_ should _be afraid. You wanted a monster? I_ _’ll give you a monster_.

A third blast sends the other scurrying for cover, sliding on the floor of her ice palace. She growls with every shot, slips back a pace to keep the two of them in her field of vision; if they get behind her, it’s over.

“Get her!”

 _Kill them, Snow Queen_. She hardly feels her lips moving. _They won_ _’t stop_.

There’s a long moment where all three stare at one another. They’re trying to circle around her, like wolves hounding a wounded hart. _They have only one shot_ , she thinks.

Well, she doesn’t. Power throbs through her. She is wind and sky and winter, and winter does not tire.

They want to fight the Snow Queen. Let them.

One of them – the clean-shaven one – raises his crossbow a fraction of an inch higher, but Elsa needs only to gesture and snarl, and she’s faster than he is. She aims at the floor and flicks her wrist, thinks of her shadow’s murderous throne. And the spikes erupt in a thicket, razor-sharp, catching him beneath the arms and slamming him up against a glassy pillar, suspending him there.

He yelps, and the sound coaxes forth _more_ spikes; sliding closer and closer. His eyes go wide, locked on her blades, and she drinks the helpless fear in his eyes like wine. _Yes_ , she thinks, and slides another forth, growing slowly and steadily towards her opponent’s throat. _I gave you a chance. I gave all of you a chance._

The other, the one with the mustache, will be striking any moment now. She twists, aims for his crossbow – take his weapon away. They _need_ those. She doesn’t. A spear of frost and the thing spins out of his gloved hands. He staggers back, tries to flee – she cuts him off with one, then another wall of spikes, boxing him in.

Elsa’s world narrows to take in nothing but the trapped look in his eyes. She can see his mouth working, but it’s a trick. It must be a trick.

She could freeze him where he stands. He has no defenses. A dozen ways to kill him flicker through her mind in rapid succession, in such vivid detail she can all but hear his screams.

Instead she thrusts out her palms and sends a wall of frost his way. He shakes his head, holds up a hand, but they didn’t listen to _her_ when _she_ begged, did they? No. They were happy to kill her when she seemed helpless! But she is not helpless. She is stronger than these pathetic little men will _ever_ be.

The man’s eyes go wide. He stumbles back against the door. Elsa’s lips tighten into a snarl as she feels the wall strain against his strength – feels the warmth of his heart pounding against her cold working, desperate, wet, his breath hot against her will. She puts just enough force into it to force him steadily back, but she could kill him at her leisure – shape the wall into spikes, or join it to the wall and seal him in his own coffin. Blades shoot out to block any escape to either side.

He’s powerless. Like he thought she was.

Her door cracks and buckles behind him, shattering in glistening fragments, but it’s a small price to pay. She can fix it later, when she’s taught these monsters real terror, when she’s scoured them from her realm and left not even the hot stink of their breath behind. She won’t go to her pyre. They aren’t even from Arendelle. She owes them nothing.

They have it coming. They’ve probably killed before. They _should_ be afraid.

 _This is real power, gentlemen. You shouldn_ _’t have trespassed on my mountain._

“Queen Elsa!”

A vaguely familiar voice, behind her. Frightened, urgent, earnest. No, he’s just trying to distract her; stay focused. She grits her teeth and bites her lip, coaxing the spikes towards the clean-shaven one’s throat, pressing the attack – she can feel the mustached one’s panic, his heart pounding out desperate pleas for mercy behind his ribs. Feel the clean-shaven fellow struggling pointlessly, cringing back from the ice’s razor-sharp kiss.

“Don’t be the monster they fear you are!”

She twists, looking over her shoulder. Why won’t he _shut up?_ Hans’ green eyes are wide and the gray-clad men stand behind him, cowering back from the sight of her. Something doesn’t seem right about that.

_Oh, but I want to be._

The strangers have weapons – they’re threats, as humans go-

She stops.

 _As humans go_. Why had she thought that?

Elsa realizes she is about to murder two helpless men. That she could have killed them a dozen times over, quick, clean – but she wanted them scared. Wanted them weak. Wanted to break them before they died, because they had thought they could break her, make her feel small, make her-

 _Don_ _’t trust them_ , howls the rage and terror in her chest. _They_ _’ll bring the fires_.

In the walls behind Hans, she sees her shadow – shaking her head in disappointment.

 _Snow Queen_ , slips from between her lips, _not a very good start to your independence._

The winter stops coursing from her arms, and suddenly Elsa is just a woman in a dress, heart beating a mile a minute and head a maelstrom of guilt and indecision. Her arms droop. She fights for breath. This is not who she wants to be. She has to stop. She has to- clear her head. Speak to the Arendelle men. Get them to take the two Weselton men into custody. Ask Hans to help her find Anna.

She barely hears the _snick_ sound.

 _Look up!_ snaps her shadow.

Elsa’s head jerks up, and the chandelier she wrought is dropping down with grim majesty, a great diamond blade a hundred times larger than the bolt frozen in the ice to split her down the middle.

 _Oh God_.

She runs, faster than she’s ever run in her life, whimpering for breath. A world-shattering crash behind her, shrapnel and shards whistling past her unprotected legs, faster and louder and more murderous, and her feet lose their traction again.

She goes skidding, the wall and floor is coming up to meet her, and pieces are still flying every-


	6. trapped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world beyond the window is a textured mass of white and blue and gray, vague shapes smothered and smoothed beneath choking snow. Little fragments of familiarity – ship’s hulls, distant houses beyond – rise out of the whiteness and do nothing but make it worse.
> 
> _That’s new._ Her shadow is visible in the window where her reflection ought to be, pixie lips quirked in a half-smile. _I like what you’ve done with the place._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies if this one is a bit short on original content; my last chapter put me into an awkward place continuity-wise. As a result, this chapter is close to a novelization of the scene from the movie.

Pain.

_Wake up, Elsa_.

Her pulse throbs through her, head to toe. There’s a sour, unpleasant taste in her mouth and a high-pitched ringing dying away in her ears.

Her blanket is heavy and itchy on her, but the bed is too hard. Did she freeze it in her sleep again? That means nights and nights of discomfort. She never calls the maids in for such things. They would ask questions.

It feels like stone.

Memories cut their way through the fog in her brain, and she shudders, remembering the shrapnel slashing by her bare legs, the world coming apart around her into flying razors, the wall rushing against her cheek.

None of that matters, though.

_This is Arendelle,_ she thinks, because it can’t be anywhere else she knows. _Where is Anna?_

Elsa slowly sits up and regrets it. Things seem to slosh around inside her skull. She’s reasonably certain that isn’t normal. Her surroundings are too dark and cold and damp, and far too confined. A prison cell. It stinks of mold, and musty air, and worse – some faint acrid scent, fear and guilt settled in over years and years – invading her nostrils.

_Well_ , her shadow observes in her husky voice. _This is a predicament_.

There’s only a bit of light in the cell, and it’s pale, wan blue-gray, a shaft slicing in through double-glazed windows. The wind moans outside.

Elsa bolts for the window. A window means a hole in the walls, means an escape, means – chains go _clink_ , and the jolt shivers through her arms and up into her shoulders, yanking her to a stop. She struggles, but knows it’s useless before she even starts.

They’re manacles, attached to heavy, solid chains whose every link is thick as one of her fingers. The sort that cover the wearer’s entire hands, used for particularly strong men. Elsa stares at them, at her slim arms disappearing into the metal stubs like giant thimbles, and feels a mad, despairing little giggle bubbling up in the back of her throat that she can’t let out because if she does she probably won’t be able to stop.

The world beyond the window is a textured mass of white and blue and gray, vague shapes smothered and smoothed beneath choking snow. Little fragments of familiarity – ship’s hulls, distant houses beyond – rise out of the whiteness and do nothing but make it worse.

_That_ _’s new_. Her shadow is visible in the window where her reflection ought to be, pixie lips quirked in a half-smile. _I like what you_ _’ve done with the place._

“Oh no,” she breathes.

Bits of her dreams, clawing their way into the waking world. Her winter, her _soul_ , is choking out the life from her homeland and her people. People who have never done her the slightest bit of wrong, who have tolerated her disease all her life. Everything and everyone she was supposed to protect and guide dying around her.

“What have I done?” she asks her private demon.

The shadow in the reflection doesn’t answer – she points and Elsa hears the door lock creak and clank open. She whirls, and Anna’s paramour slips inside on soft shoes, a lantern burning yellow-green in his hand.

_Don_ _’t trust him,_ her shadow murmurs, and Elsa prays her lips aren’t moving again. Her madness is no longer a private luxury. She sucks in a breath and summons the tattered scraps of her royal dignity.

The young man’s shoulders are slumped; his face worried and eyes downcast. Kind. He walks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders, but there are no injuries – visible ones, at least – from the battle with her creation. Elsa’s grateful for that. She has enough blood on her hands already.

( _What happened to my creation?_ she wonders guiltily. _He fought for me. Died for me. They murdered him_.)

“Why did you bring me here?” she demands, trying to modulate her voice, but it comes out more plaintive than she needs it and more sharp-edged than is useful. _Why couldn_ _’t you just leave me alone?_

“I couldn’t just let them kill you.”

_Late for nobility_ , her doppelganger quips.

Elsa hopes she didn’t say it aloud this time; it won’t get her anything but grief, not with this young, earnest man. She swallows her anger and tries to stay calm. "But I’m a danger to Arendelle,” she snaps. Surely he understands _that._ (Winter itches beneath her skin, hungry, roused, whispering _show him, show him, make him understand_.)“Get Anna!”

"Anna," what flashes through his eyes is pity, more terrible than any hate or rage she’s ever seen, and he draws closer, clutches at himself in a way Elsa finds very familiar, “has not returned."

Small words, but it makes her cold in a way her winter never could. Her head snaps sideways and she steps towards the window, determined to shatter it, to run out into the blizzard screaming her sister’s name – and her shadow is watching in the reflection, shaking her head.

_You_ _’re not going anywhere,_ she whispers. The chains clink. Her sister’s ghost presses heavy on her shoulders like a weight of iron.

He’s saying something plaintive. “-stop the winter. Bring back summer. Please.”

_Yes, because now that he_ _’s asked **nicely** I can do it_ , she thinks, and then shudders, because where did that come from? He’s not a bad man. He saved her life. She knows what he’s going through because she’s trodden this path so many times before.

“Don’t you see?” she mutters, and stares at him, willing him to see the horror she’s feeling, to peer into her eyes and see the shadow winking back. It would be such a relief, for someone to know. “I _can_ _’t!_ _”_

She needs him, at least, to understand. Why won’t **any** of them understand? Do they think her so **sick** inside that she’d do this to them on purpose?

_Of course they do,_ her shadow retorts, blue eyes glimmering like will-o’-the-wisps. _Did you think they_ _’d understand? Will saying you_ _’re so very sorry keep them warm?_

“You have to tell them to let me go.” How can she make that sound like she _isn_ _’t_ running? She’s the center of this winter – she has to get away, to master herself, to draw the blizzards from Arendelle. Up in the mountains she’d been isolated, solitary, _safe_.

Hans’ face clouds over, goes still. She looks into his eyes and sees herself looking back –terror, resignation, uncertainty. It’s strangely chilling, to realize how completely helpless she’s left all of them. She wonders if he’s spent nights awake in dread, too, hated the face staring back at him and savaged it with cosmetics and couture and coiffing until he’s tamed the ugliness to some semblance of beauty.

It’s strange, really. He didn’t seem this way at the coronation. (Then again, she didn’t either.)

“I will do what I can,” he says, trying and failing to sound comforting. The problem is, they both know exactly how much that’s worth.

The door slams shut, and there’s no pretense that she’s ever leaving of her own free will again.

Her fingers itch in their confinement, frost running from them like sweat. She hears the manacles hiss. Icing.

_They_ _’re going to kill us_ , her shadow says.

“Of course they are.” Her breath flutters in her throat. “It looks like you’ll get your way after all.”

_So what are you going to do about it?_ Her shadow’s hands go to her hips. _Sit back and let them_?

Elsa’s fingers clench in her manacles. She looks around the empty cell. Thinks of her sister out there in the whirling blizzard. Of her people.

“No.”

She closes her eyes and reaches out into the storm.


End file.
